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The first snow in Glasgow fell last night, so it seems the right time to write about something a bit Christmassy – crocheted snowflakes!

crocheted snowflakes

The ones you see here are my own creation, the pointy one from an online pattern and the chunkier one from a YouTube tutorial. These are made out of thread. You can make them out of wool, of course, but then they’re not so sweet and delicate.

I learnt to crochet in Albania, where all the women seem to crochet, because there’s not much else to do when the electricity goes off (as it did at that time) every evening. I’ve never been any good at knitting, so it was good to find an alternative handicraft.

I think everyone understands the thrill of creating something yourself, especially if it’s something good enough to show people or put to use. I have made a scarf that I still wear, a baby blanket, and a tablecloth, amongst my bigger projects. At times it feels like you will never finish but the good thing about crochet, unlike knitting, is that a lot of patterns are either made up of small pieces, so you have a sense of completion as you go along, or look good after the first 50 stitches or so. With knitting, at 50 stitches it would still look like a straight line.

The wee snowflakes here didn’t take anything like as long, although I did make the pointy one in a silky thread and cursed my decision several times through the hour it took to make it, as the slippery thread slipped away again. Anyway, they took less than an hour each and will now decorate my Christmas tree – whenever I can be bothered to get it down from the loft. I prefer to ease myself into Christmas, not jump right in on 1st December.

If you would like to have a go yourself you will need thread (or wool) and a hook (just the one – another advantage over knitting) which you can get for a quid or two from a department store or haberdashers. There are loads of sites that will teach you the basics, and then the world is your crocheted oyster.